Our Mission
The National Jobs for All Coalition is dedicated to the proposition that access to useful employment paying wages capable of supporting a dignified standard of living is a human right that governments have a duty to secure–and that they CAN do it. How? While remaining open to the consideration of other strategies, we believe a progressive consensus is forming that the best way of securing this right is by providing all job seekers with what New Deal social-welfare planners called “employment assurance”–a promise of decent employment producing useful public goods and services for everyone whose desire for work is not matched by the availability of adequate employment opportunities on the “demand side” of the labor market. The goal of this policy can be described in various ways–as a “jobs for all” policy, the achievement of “full employment,” the realization of the “right to work,” the enactment of a “job guarantee,” or (as noted above) the provision of “employment assurance.” We view all of these characterizations of the goal as synonymous with one another and are dedicated to supporting the growth of a popular movement capable of finally achieving this long sought objective.
Our History
The National Jobs for All Coalition was founded in June 1994 at a National Leadership Consultation for Full Employment that brought together representatives from over 70 regional and national organizations. The convening group, New Initiatives for Full Employment (NIFE), consisted of an ethnically and racially diverse group of social activists and academics who had worked together since 1986 to develop a feasible plan for full employment, suited to the economic realities of the late twentieth century and to the new millennium that was then around the corner. NJFAC’s plan takes into account the increasing globalization of trade and financial markets, a post-industrial economy in which service employment predominates, and a workforce comprised not only of all male job seekers but of all such women as well. New Initiatives for Full Employment began meeting in New York City in 1986 and established a Seminar for Full Employment as part of the Columbia University Seminars Program that enabled it to confer with scholars doing cutting-edge work on problems of employment and related issues in the U. S. as well as other countries. As a result of the Seminar, several conferences featuring leading economic thinkers, and our own deliberations, we developed the plan that was set forth in Jobs for All: A Plan for the Revitalization of America, a short book with which we launched the National Jobs for All Coalition. The organizing consultation was hosted by the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College, City University of New York.
Our Legal Status
The National Jobs for All Coalition is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization.